Guide to understanding Amsterdam news:

“400 cobras found in shed”: they mean fireworks, it’s fine (it’s not fine)

“Python in console”: no, programmers fleeing PHP, don’t stick your hands in there, it’s a literal snake.

“It’s a poor worksman who blames his tools” has always been complete nonsense. No-one complains about imperfect tools faster and louder than a master. A master will yank a cheap or damaged tool out of your hand and yell at you for not blaming it yet

Cheap, lousy tools come from middle managers who don’t know how to do your job. Blame the hell out of poor tools and those who demand you use them

RE: https://cloudisland.nz/@ehashman/117481992432596098

In the Netherlands, first we got a national news alert that all government websites were shutting down because of the PHP bug, and then our national comedian-newscaster Lubach did a bit about it.

so yeah, containment was breached

ugh. the patch is massive 🫩 the bug is based on causing an OOM condition and no-one ever accused the php interpreter of being neatly and elegantly architected, so the fix touches everything 🫩 the bugs go back many years but backporting the fix to all those versions is wildly impractical 🫩

the exploit was developed with AI assistance but it was based on existing human research, including by my old nemesis Stefan Esser. I don't remember why he's my nemesis, I assume we got into a stupid twitter argument over nothing like 16 years ago

and for the record, I am not Eevee of "fractal of bad design" fame; I am sure people have mixed up me and @eevee before. Understandable, we're both cute girls who had a Passionate PHP Hater phase in our distant youths. But I'm a knockoff vocaloid and she's a pokemon. Completely different!

This was eevee's original extremely famous blog post: https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/ which also largely does not apply to PHP As She Is Meant To Be Spoke in 2026, but you can use it as a guide for how not to design a language or other complex software system.

anyway I just learned that the Dutch government service websites are implemented in PHP because a national news alert has gone out that they're shut down for the day due to reasons

So, no matter how bad the PHP fallout proves to be, I have to concede that they *have* cleaned up their act quite a bit in recent years and these sorts of bugs out of PHP are much, much rarer than they used to be

Did you know that, when I was a fiery young programmer in my 20s, I ran a hate blog dedicated to the PHP manual and how bad, unreliable, and unhelpful it was? Here are some highlights:

Special snowflake not-actually-a-function isset() https://phpmanualmasterpieces.tumblr.com/post/52082199266/unsettling

The notorious strcmp() footgun https://phpmanualmasterpieces.tumblr.com/post/44634822304/i-am-so-comically-angry-right-now

When 1 equals 4096 https://phpmanualmasterpieces.tumblr.com/post/33023415508/when-does-one-byte-equal-four-kilobytes

PBKDF API designed to trip you up https://phpmanualmasterpieces.tumblr.com/post/66426423275/i-cant-spell-pbkdf

And, my favorite, a review of the complete original PHP 2.0 manual from the late 90s: https://phpmanualmasterpieces.tumblr.com/post/65544023819/php-20-a-review-in-retrospect

(The picture of Espurr in that post links to a domain that used to play the Lavender Town theme. Please put on Lavender Town yourself for full effect)

All these posts are 12 to 15 years old and do not necessarily reflect the current state of either the documentation or the code. Gods, I hope they don't.

#php

In my husband’s defense, we realized this when he decided to surprise me with flowers for an unrelated reason

Double ADHD marriage be like: realizing we both completely forgot about our anniversary weeks ago

Everyone, I have a suggestion: New Skill November.

#NewSkillNovember

pssst hey

Glory in the Thunder Act 1 updated with Chapter 4

a queer autistic first crush story with magic powers, told through the medium of interlocking toy blocks of a brand none of us shall name because they don't endorse stories where kids die, probably

there is an HTML5 version linked from the itch page. everything is free-to-read

https://0xabad1dea.itch.io/glory-in-the-thunder-act-1

#gloryinthethunder #writing #fiction #visualnovel #lgbtq

🐾🐾🦴🦴ODIN FAQ🦴🦴🐾🐾

- Odin is our Newfoundlander. He was born in January 2024 in the Netherlands; he is nine months old in the attached photos.

- Yes, he is very, very, very big. He grew indescribably quickly and yes, he is still growing. We expect him to top out around 80kg.

- He is incredibly sweet, loving, and kind. He has never once shown aggression towards another dog, even though many have tried to preemptively fight him off. He rarely barks. On the other hand, he has no social graces and cannot take a hint when another dog tries to tell him to leave them alone.

- He's an enormous cuddlebug and I have the scars and bruises to prove it.

- We live on the edge of an enormous park, he gets plenty of time to go outside. Newfies are not very high-energy, we don't need some sort of mansion with a private meadow to accommodate his movement needs.

- What he does need is thorough grooming every single day. Yes, he sheds absolute mountains of hair.

- Yes, he inhales thousands of calories of food a day. It will decrease when he's no longer growing like a black hole.

- The drool. You cannot imagine the drool.

- My husband and I love this dog with all our heart and soul. We're often asked "did you realize he'd get this big?", and trust us, it was the most intentional decision of our lives

#dogs #dogsofmastodon #newfie